How to Build a $10 Robot

Low-cost robot designs poured in from around the world in response to the $10 robotics challenge issued by the newly-launched African Robotics Network. These robots could change the way robotics is taught in schools.

How to Build a $10 Robot

How to Build a $10 Robot

Students interested in experimenting with robotics have a few options at their fingertips. One is Lego Mindstorm, packed with the creative potential of Lego pieces, plus motors, sensors, and a programmable computer to bring them to life. But at $300 per kit, the cost is prohibitive for people in impoverished communities.

Young minds in developing countries are no less curious, though. So to give them access to tools and the chance to experiment, a number hackers, students, and hobbyists from around the world have gone to work to prove that robot building can be cheaper—and accessible to all. They are members of the newly launched African Robotics Network (AFRON), and they just completed the network's first challenge: to design a $10 robotics kit. AFRON just announced the winners.

"This whole idea was, supposing we could make a really, really cheap robot kit, what could it be used for, and how could it be useful in the classroom?" says Ayorkor Korsah, a computer science professor at Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana, who co-founded the network. "If you put this challenge to robotics enthusiasts or robotics researchers all over the world, what can they come up with? Can they actually make robots that cost $10?"

AFRON launched in May and now has more than 300 members in 25 countries. Korsah and her co-founder, Ken Goldberg, a professor of robotics, art, and new media at the University of California, Berkeley, put the word out to robotics organizations worldwide that they were looking for a cheap kit. And to their surprise, dozens of entries poured in.

"The designs far exceeded our expectations," Goldberg says. "We set $10 as a kind of inspirational target, and we had no idea anybody would get even close to it." As for the designs, Goldberg says, "they were tremendous … people devoted hundreds of hours to the designs. [With] the grand winner, the Suckerbot, anybody with $10 and some time can sit down and make it."

IEEE's Robotics and Automation Society put together a $3000 pot for the winners. But robot builders, like 3D printing ethusiasts, Linux fans, and anyone who programs things, tend to be zealous volunteers of their shop hours and their online advice. Now, AFRON is hoping for the same kind of enthusiasm from entrepreneurs. The network has a portfolio of cheap robot designs that it would like to see mass-produced as kits and educational curriculum for students.

You can see the full list of AFRON design winners on their site. We picked a few of our favorites here.

Suckerbot (Thailand)

Suckerbot (Thailand)

The Suckerbot costs $8.96 in parts and took first place in the tethered category with an overload of kid-friendliness. It's creator—Thomas Tilley, an information technology instructor at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand— is a veteran joystick hacker. He has about a dozen joystick-based devices from a wooden mat to a voting machine.

Basically, Suckerbot is a USB dual-shock joystick with the sides sawed off to mount wheels on the rumble motors. The namesake lollipops protrude like crab eyes from the thumbsticks. One of the lollipops serves as a bump sensor that lets the bot know if it hits an obstacle. Underneath the robot, a simple line-detecting circuit is patched into the X and Y axes of the other thumbstick, allowing the robot to follow a line drawn onto the floor or surface where it rolls.

As another clever cost saver, that circuit board is actually a piece of cardboard printed with a diagram that shows students where to place the components. The design leaves room for modifications, from light-sensing movement to replacement parts for the suckers.

"My first idea was to use a pen or a chopstick but then I realized that a Chupa Chup would work well," Tilley says. (Chupa Chups are a Spanish brand of lollipop with a logo designed by Salvador Dali.)